Wednesday, December 19, 2012

The Stable

Insert picture of stable here...

Song: "Once Within a Lowly Stable" (Children's Songbook 41)

We all know that the Savior of the world was born in a lowly stable, but most of us picture that as a western wooden barn type structure. But a stable for Mary and Joseph would have most likely have been a cave. Thus, in a stable-cave Mary gave Jesus mortal life, and from a sepulcher-cave Jesus came forth to give Mary and all mankind immortal life. Both caves are reminders that Jesus descended “below all things” (see 1 Nephi 11:16; D & C 88:6). We all know that Jesus was born in a stable, but the facts about that stable, about how they got there and what it is, are not so well understood. The word the King James translators choose to translate as inn, kataluma, is the same word that Mark and Luke later use for the Upper Room in which the Last Supper is held. In both Luke 22:11 and Mark 14:14 the same Greek word, katalum, is translated as guestchamber, and in the story of the Good Samaritan the word translated as inn is not kataluma but pandeion.

What most scholars now believe is that Mary and Joseph went to stay with relatives in Bethlemem (which makes sense also because Bethlehem was such a small town it would be unlikely to have enough business to support an inn), but by the time they arrived their relatives' guestroom was already taken and so they stayed in the stable.
This makes sense because many homes in that day were built in front of a cave
and used the cave to stable animals and supplies.

But where the stable is isn’t the important thing. The stable is still a stable filled with animals and the filth and stink that go along with a stable. I can imagine how Joseph and the relatives worked to make the cave as comfortable as possible as Mary stove against the pains that would bring our Savior into the world.

Again the symbolism is astonishing. Caves are under ground. They are below the earth's surface and from this underground stable-cave Mary brought Jesus forth and gave Him mortal life. This foreshadows the event three decades later when, from an underground sepulcher-cave, Jesus would come forth to give Mary and all of us immortal life.

Both caves remind us that Jesus descended “below all things” (see 1 Nephi 11:16; D & C 88:6). Theologians call this the condescension of God, and Paul describes it like this: He was God “but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form
of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men” (Phil. 2:7). The King James
translators chose to translate the Greek word used in this verse as reputation,
but a more accurate translation is that Jesus “emptied himself.” He was God,
yet He emptied himself of power to begin anew, growing from grace to grace.